It’s time to kill the myth that Climate Action will make us poorer

Chaired by Professor Dame Sarah Whatmore

Join us for a conversation with two of the most incisive minds in economics – Nobel laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz and climate economist Lord Nicholas Stern, as they overturn conventional wisdom to demonstrate how taking strong action on climate change can enhance economic growth and lead to a happier and healthier society. 

Chaired by Oxford University’s Professor Dame Sarah Whatmore, the discussion will dissect the myth that society must choose between a strong economy and protecting the environment, and identify the flaws in the models and analyses that underpin this persistent misunderstanding. 

Based on new research, Professors Stiglitz and Stern will consider the challenges that are holding back economic performance and share policies that could help move the world from sluggish and destructive growth to dynamic and sustainable development.

Join us to understand why the benefits of taking action now are especially high – and why reducing emissions and solving the climate crisis fast is the smart economic move. 

This event is the inaugural Humphrey Battcock Lecture of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. It is co-convened and hosted by New College, Oxford. It will also be live-streamed on YouTube. 

Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz, Co-Founder & President of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD)
Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and a Professor at Columbia University. He is also the co-chair of the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress at the OECD, and the Chief Economist of the Roosevelt Institute.

Professor Stiglitz was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001 and the John Bates Clark Medal in 1979. He is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and a former chair of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers. In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. In 2011 Stiglitz was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Known for his pioneering work on asymmetric information, Stiglitz's research focuses on income distribution, climate change, corporate governance, public policy, macroeconomics and globalization.  He is the author of numerous books including, most recently, People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent and Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Share Prosperity.

Lord Nicholas Stern
Professor Stern is the IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and Head of the India Observatory at the London School of Economics. He was President of the British Academy, July 2013 – 2017, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2014.
 
Professor Stern has held academic appointments in the UK at Oxford, Warwick and the LSE and abroad including at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Ecole Polytechnique and the Collège de France in Paris, the Indian Statistical Institute in Bangalore and Delhi, and the People’s University of China in Beijing.